The cotton market may be global, but international commodity merchants are showing a preference for cotton futures contracts that are local.

While trading of US cotton futures often tops 20,000 contracts per day, volumes in the world contract totalled just 38 contracts over the entire month of March. The world contract was a sellers’contract, as it gave them a wide choice of delivery points. It never made sense to a number of people in the industry, and the odds of any new contract becoming successful are not very high.

The new world contract reflects the global nature of production, permitting cotton grown in locales from West Africa to Brazil to be delivered to warehouses in Australia, Malaysia, Taiwan and the US. The contract would provide a new price discovery and risk management vehicle for the large volume of commercial cotton that moves from key origins to the multiple Asian consuming countries that dominate global exports and imports of cotton.

Cotton executives have been cautious ahead of the first delivery month in May. Among their concerns are that lower quality bales would be sold from countries where cotton bolls are still picked by hand.

Volumes in Intercontinental Exchange’s world cotton futures, backed by bales from nine countries, have evaporated since their debut five months ago. Four in five trading sessions saw no transactions in February and March.